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| Lancelot Andrewes. Bodleian Library |
This Easter Sunday morning I listened to a
reading of a sermon entitled “Doubt on Easter Sunday,” by Lancelot Andrewes,
originally given in the court of Queen Elizabeth I in 1600. Bishop Andrewes
felt that intellectual doubt (or infidelity, as he called it) about the factual
basis of Christian faith was the greatest problem of his time. For Andrewes,
1600 was already “the dregs of time,” when the faith of the early Church had
faded away. I guess he might consider that the dregs have travelled through the
sink-hole and been sucked well down the drain by now, although in some
respects, his argument seemed quite contemporary.
The bishop examines the account of Christ’s
resurrection with an eye for evidence to counter doubt. He points out how slow
the twelve disciples were to accept the resurrection: even after they had seen
the risen Jesus with their own eyes, they were “jealous of their own senses”
and struggled to believe. Thomas took this reluctance to another level by
insisting on touching, not merely seeing the flesh of Christ before he would
believe. Only once convinced of the resurrection by evidence in multiple,
mutually confirming forms did the disciples go out to spread the good news. How
then were they able to overcome the doubts of listeners who had not seen or
touched the resurrected Christ personally? The disciples had neither worldly
power, nor rhetorical skill; they were destitute, weak, uneducated men. But
they had a more powerful, compelling way to overcome doubt: they were able to
perform miracles, immediate evidence that the greater miracle they had
themselves witnessed was true.
Christian faith, on this account, is originally
based on the direct testimony of eyewitnesses (and one fingerwitness). Miracles
provide ‘evidence-based’ proof that there is more to reality than secular
science can explain. This suggests that in spite of their apparent opposition,
Christianity and science have a key feature in common. They both present
evidence to support their theories/doctrines, and anyone who accepts this
evidence and understands its implications can join the community of true believers.
Independent reflection and belief are at the core of both Christian and
scientific worldviews, at least by the time Lancelot Andrewes wrote his sermon.
As systems of evidence-based belief, both Christianity and modern science have
been able spread rapidly and democratically; there is no need to belong to any
particular cultural group to participate.
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| The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio (1601-1602) |
This account of Christian doubt and faith
reminds me of the way Buddhism is often presented in the West. A rather loosely
translated passage from the Kalama Sutta is widely reproduced (I remember coming
across it pinned to the wall in a kuti in Santi Forest Monastery in Bundanoon);
it claims that the Buddha told the Kalamas:
“Do not believe in anything simply
because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is
spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is
found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the
authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because
they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and
analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to
the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”
Bodhipaksa calls this a “calamitous misreading” and compares it with
a more scholarly translation of the sutta:
“Now, Kalamas, don’t go by reports, by
legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by
analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the
thought, ‘This contemplative is our teacher.’ When you know for yourselves
that, ‘These qualities are skillful; these qualities are blameless; these
qualities are praised by the wise; these qualities, when adopted and carried
out, lead to welfare and to happiness’ — then you should enter and remain
in them.”
The two versions both emphasize the
importance of “knowing for yourself” through personal experience, observation
and reflection. However, the first, more popular version both fails to bring
out the warning against speculative reasoning that is given here and in other
early Buddhist suttas, and more generally presents belief as the central
concern of the teaching, rather than the assessment and cultivation of qualities of mind.
This interpolated focus on belief appears
to be the product of a Western bias which could be informed by either a
Christian or a scientific worldview, given their shared interest in the
question of how to form true beliefs. This is not to suggest that the
translator’s intent was to assimilate Buddhist to Christian teachings. On the
contrary, this slant allows the Buddhist teaching to appear as a competitive
alternative to the Christian approach, since in spite of Bishop Andrewes’
efforts, these days many see Christianity as demanding belief based on blind acceptance
of authority, in the absence of evidence, even in the absence of
comprehension. As Madeleine Peyroux sings, “They preached the gospel down in
New Orleans, they preached it at school. Never made much sense to me, wonder if
it was supposed to…”
The idea that the Buddha, like a scientist,
does not ask us to believe anything unless and until we are personally convinced
of its truth is attractive to the modern mind. On the other hand, if Buddhism
adheres to the same methods as science, and is in the same business of
generating rational, well-supported beliefs, then it seems likely that science
will supersede it just as, for many, it has superseded Christianity. Why not
just stick with science?
The more scholarly translation of the sutta
is richer, not only in that it is more authentic, but also in that it indicates
that Buddhism might be less concerned with beliefs than with certain qualities of mind, and consequently teach a form of enlightenment that is qualitatively
different to that of science. In spite of the overt emphasis on belief in
Christianity, I suspect that this is true of living versions of that religion,
too.
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| William Blake, Christ Appearing to the Apostles after the Resurrection (1795) |
